#and s5 will be about them supporting each other and living their complete and total truths now that they see there's no reason to hide | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beepboop358 · 3 years

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How I think the characters will react to Byler when it is officially officially confirmed in the show:

El: once El realizes she doesn't romantically love Mike, she will become an avid byler protector.

El is a badass independent woman with a pure heart of gold. She cares deeply for Mike because he was the first person to show her any sort of compassion, so she will want him to be happy, and after she grows closer to Will, she will want Will to be happy too. El won't understand the societal stigmas around Mike and Will liking each other, since she was raised in a lab away from society and then lived isolated in Hopper's cabin, she has no knowledge of what society deems right from wrong surrounding sexuality and love. She will think other people thinking Mike and Will's relationship is 'wrong' or 'unnatural' is utter bullshit and completely stupid, as she should!

Jonathan: he will be 100% supportive. He knows how Lonnie tormented Will and made homophobic remarks about Will being gay when he was younger. He has always encouraged Will to be himself and ignore what others say, especially what Lonnie says. Jonathan will also be a byler protector.

Jonathan knows Will isn't "normal", he even said Will was "good at hiding" in s1 which has several meanings, and he probably already knows Will likes Mike because of how he immediately turns to look at Will after Mike blurts out he loves El in s3 in Hopper's cabin.

s1 ep. 2: "He's trying to force you to like normal things, and you shouldn't like things because people tell you you're supposed too."

s2 ep. 1: "No I'm serious. You're a freak. But what? Do you want to be normal? Do you wanna be just like everybody else? Being a freak is the best. I'm a freak. Who would you rather be friends with? Bowie or Kenny Rogers? Exactly. It's no contest. The thing is, nobody normal ever accomplished anything meaningful in this world. You got it?"

------(Some subtle queer coding there with the Bowie reference; David Bowie was a bisexual musician, and he also sings the original version of the song "Heroes" that plays after Will's fake body is found in s1, and the lines that play while Mike cries and hugs his Mom are extremely queer coded: "And we kiss as though nothing could fall. And the shame.")

Nancy: It's implied Nancy and Mike are pretty close, and honestly I think she has always suspected that Mike has a little thing for Will. From the look on Nancy’s face when he blurts out he loves El, it kind of reads as like she doesn’t believe him, because she knows something.

s1 ep.7: "I knew you were acting weird, I just, I thought it was beause of Will"

Joyce: will be 100% supportive, and a protective mama bear of Will as always, but also for Mike. Joyce will join the club of avid byler protectors along with Jonathan and El.

Dustin: avid byler supporter. I think he's picked up on how much Mike cares for Will, how Will cares for Mike, and has probably suspected at least something this whole time. Dustin doesn't care about being considered cool he cares about doing what he likes and being true to himself, and that belief for sure translates into how he views his friends as well. He will absolutely support Mike and Will and treat them normally.

s3 ep.3: "Instead of dating somebody because you think it's gonna make you cooler, why not date somebody you actually enjoy being around?" s1 ep.6: "Sometimes your total obliviousness just blows my mind"

Max: She seems pretty perceptive, so she's probably picked up on Mike and Will's 'special dynamics' by now, and we know she's definitely sick of how Mike treated El. She will be supportive of Will and Mike, but mostly she will just be glad Mike isn't with El anymore LOL.

Lucas: I think he definitely notices Mike seems to reallllyyyy care for Will, and that Mike doesn't act the same about El, although he claims too. I think Lucas sees through Mike's bullshit. Look at his smirking face and crossed arms when Mike frantically asks where Will is in s2:

and how he reacts the same way to Mike blurting out he loves El and "can't lose her again" in s3:

Hopper: he will probably want to kill Mike again.

"wait what?! so.. let me get this straight...all that time you were making out with my daughter, you were just...pretending to love her? You lied to her the whole time you two 'dated' yeah? And now you're dating your best friend. Oh god wait, I watched you tell him that asking him to be your friend was the best thing you ever did that night in the shed... Oh you little asshole!"

I can't imagine Hopper being homophobic towards Will and Mike, but I don't see him jumping up and down for them either. He will mainly be upset that Mike dated El when he was actually in love with Will, and not care so much that Mike is in love with another boy, just another person. But once he processes that El is actually okay, he will be fine with it.

Lonnie: is the literal scum of the earth! Obviously Lonnie will hate that Will is gay and dating another man. He will probably make some comments about how he "always knew it" and call Will and Mike homophobic slurs, probably at Will's birthday.

s1 ep.1: "He used to say he was queer, called him a f*g"

Steve: "Oh you two little shits are dating now? But I thought he was into the psionic chick? No? Okay, alright cool. Uh hey have you guys met Robin yet? I think you would get along, you know what I'll introduce you." Steve was so accepting of Robin coming out to him, there's no way he won't have the same kind of reaction for Mike and Will.

Robin: once she gets to actually know them and spend time with them, she will adopt Mike and Will as her gay sons and inspire them to be themselves and help them out whenever they need it. She will also pick up on the fact that they like each other immediately. If we don't get this pairing in s4 because of location logistics, I really hope we get it in s5!!!

Erica: she won't be homophobic, but she just won't care too much.

Karen: will encourage Mike to follow his heart, and like whoever he likes, because a relationship needs real love to survive, and she knows all too well what it is like to be stuck in a relationship with no love, and she doesn't want that for her kids, she wants better for them. She wants Mike to be truly happy no matter what, and she doesn't want to see him repeat her mistakes. Karen will be very supportive of Mike, and probably defend him to Ted.

s1 ep.2: "All this that’s been going on with Will, I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you. I just…I want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me. I’m here for you okay?”

Ted: he won't be as much of an asshole as Lonnie will be about it, but he will probably make some snarky comments.

s1 ep.7: “our son with a girl? *scoffing*”

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flodaya · 2 years

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so many of the conflicts this season revolve around relationship drama, from the isi/lou/consti love triangle, to the zoe/finn open relationship drama, and the drama that's definitely going to unfold between isi and sascha about the consti kiss. each of these storylines we're bad for different reasons, but as a whole it's just annoying because it feels like tv shows refuse to acknowledge that teens lives don't revolve around romance.

i'm not saying that the media shouldn't portray romance at all, because scenes like the eva/jonas and nora/josh break-ups showed the importance of communication and prioritizing yourself. and the zoe/finn open relationship plot could be so cool if it actually shows good communication instead of the direction i fear druck is going to take.

but there were so many other storylines this season could have highlighted, like gender identity or bullying or toxic friendships, that are incredibly relevant to teens who are just beginning to discover themselves, and instead these plots were sidelined for love triangle after love triange after love triangle. idk i guess what i'm trying to say is that romance is way overhyped in teen shows when in reality, when i was in high school, less than half the people in my grade were in relationships and most people didn't even want a relationship

tbh that's why i liked new gen so much because even though romances were major plot lines, there were other important parts of the story that were relatable

oh yes absolutely, actually this was the reason why i loved new gen's girl squad more than old gen's because one of my major complaints was how the girl squad only ever talked about boys, and i'm sorry to have ruined it for you now because once you know you can't unsee it

but the cashqueens are really well-rounded friend group, and i love how in s5 they were the main love story really, i love josh but the season could have totally worked without him, yet the center of the story were the cashqueens and nora finding genuinely supportive and loving friends

fatou's season was romance heavy but we expected it, plus a black lesbian character getting a whole romcom storyline is just honestly what any lesbian and/or black girl out there deserves; but even while the main storyline was her and kieu my's relationship, there was still a heavy focus on friendships and the cashqueens and again that storyline was almost completely unconnected to any romance plotline, like i know people are still fighting about this scene but i love how the two grand gestures fatou planned were for her platonic best friend and her girlfriend, literally demonstrating how platonic and romantic love are equally worth!!

while i think "ismail's season shouldn't have had a love interest" is a whole different discussion, i totally agree the way they are handling all the romance stuff definitely isn't working and yeah it's because they seem to be unable to tell a story without forcing romance or sexual tension into the scene? a reason why the gender identity and umut clips are the best because they seem to be the only ones not connected to any romance plotline, if only they didn't make up only about 1/10 of the season....

again: IF it turns out ismail is asexual it would explain so many things in retrospect, like this heavy focus on sex and love that annoys us also annoys ismail and makes them uncomfortable, would be a nice parallel (its not working rn and won't make the season an all time best but might save if from being worse than a skamfr season)

#druck #ask #druck season 7 #my posts

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elizabethsharmon · 4 years

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reblog if you feel disrespected by skam france and demand official apology

below a full list of all the offenses:

Manon going back to Ch*rbage after he emotionally manipulated her to not testify against his brother (who got her drunk, took nudes of her, and kept blackmailing her) because “after all nothing happened = he didn’t r*pe her”

Making Arthur and Alexia a couple in the first place just so he could cheat on her with Noee and lie to her for weeks and then having her break up with him, only for them to suddenly being good friends in s6 and kissing in the last clip (which ngl almost made me throw up)

Bringing up Lucas’ insecurities and abandonment issues but never letting him talk about them with Eliott; posting some damage control posts on instagram instead and pretending like Lucas is fine with Eliott kissing Lola for the film (which he clearly wasn’t, the writers seem to not know him at all)

Wasting time to edit Tiff’s head onto different animals and posting things on that cyberbullying account that no one cared about instead of posting something from the grew + the worst social media ever

Not giving us a proper goodbye to the grew and not really saying anything about their future

Lying to the fans about god knows what we will see in s6 and baiting them to watch even though legit nothing of it happened

Not continuing Arthur’s story in s6 (fine, I don’t really care about that but we were supposed to see it so ???? )

Treating some fans more privileged than the others, giving them spoilers about the new seasons, inviting them on set

FranceTV Slash and SkamLaSerie instas mocking fans in their stories - saying stuff like Lola will cause the break up between Daphne and Basile, “addiction can be useful for flirting” (yikes), creating a ship war between fans in s5 by posting two photos of Alexia/Arthur and Noee/Arthur with a caption “we love them both, we can’t choose”, the host of the live of s6 calling people on tumblr “obsessed” and not apologizing when people said they’re offended by that, blocking people who were asking questions about why the SA was never mentioned again during the live

Liking all the praise but constantly ignoring fans when they were asking questions about writing choices and then blocking them

the rest of 50 offenses under cut cause turns out they really disrespected me more than I thought

feel free to add whatever you want if i forgot about something

None of the girls really apologizing to Imane at the end of season 4 after all they’ve put her through and after they took the side of the racist (who already had a history of drama with Emma) instead of their friend

Taking away Noee’s integrity and making her say “I love you” out loud (which was totally ooc cause an episode earlier she said LSF is her language and she doesn’t like her voice) after Arthur (who was leading her on for weeks) told her they can’t be together

Male gaze in s5 because even though the sign language is a body language, the way camera was lingering on her flat, bare stomach, a few times showing a close up on her boobs during the “song-dance” scene was male gaze

Lack of beautiful, slow-mo, piano music scenes for Alexia with Arthur staring at her awestruck because apparently she’s not worthy enough

Completely sidelining the deaf/hoh storyline in favour of cheating/love triangle plot

Reducing Camille to a translator and randomly making him Mika’s boyfriend because why the hell not

Completely forgetting about Mika and Lisa after s5 (did they ever find that roommate????)

Noee kissing Arthur right after he shared his traumatic story with her and overshadowing domestic abuse with cheating

Absolutely no follow-up about P*trick and domestic abuse after s5

Having P*trick cheat on Arthur’s mom with Emma’s mom because they’re all one big family

Random crackfic farm episode that didn’t make absolutely ANY sense

Killing Fifi rip [*]

Arthur getting hit by The Car and being perfectly fine the next day

The Boy Squad becoming cheating apologists, Lucas giving Arthur the same advice he gave to Emma in s1 and Yann (who got hurt because of it back then) supporting it

Character regression, especially for Lucas, and the whole boy squad acting out of character

Continuously trying to make Lucas look like a bad guy because they knew we would forgive him everything

Arthur suddenly liking art even though it hasn’t been ever mentioned before and his whole instagram was filled with space related posts

Parallels between Eliott/Lucas and Arthur/Noee

Catherine - or lack of her - aka the queerbait from s3

Completely ignoring character’s birthdays - Basile and Manon (second year in a row)

Not introducing Lola before and making s6 about a complete stranger but still expecting the fans to like her from the get-go and watch the show by baiting the fans with the promise of “unofficial mains” (Daphne and Eliott)

Forcing the Lola/Eliott friendship and selling it in the promo as sister/brother relationship instead of writing it in a way that would make it flow naturally

Making Eliott Otteli Urbex King only to forget the plot after more or less three clips; also having Eliott hide the truth from Lucas for months and then pretending to resolve it in a text to Lola ??? which didn’t make sense in the first place but then it turned out that it was just damage control

Making Lola hook up with much older guys than her over and over again and having one of them s*xually assault just so Eliott could play the hero and save her; never bringing that up again

Making Eliott punch people left and right - anything to protect the ladies, Sofiane punching Ch*rbage in s4 can agree I guess

Letting Eliott talk about his past and insecurities only so Lola could prey on them later and emotionally manipulate him into drinking

Also Eliott not letting Lola apologize and brushing off her apologies because apparently that was nothing at all and it’s okay to let people walk you over and manipulate you

Not letting Lucas speak for himself

The whole Lux & Obscurus plot, having Eliott write the film about his and Lucas’ relationship and what his love means to Eliott only to have Lola play in it, not adjusting the script so that it would fit the change and still keeping the Eliott/Lola kiss as a big fuck you to the fandom instead of having it end with a forehead touch and fade to black especially that they haven’t even showed it to us again during the screening of Eliott’s film (but it made all the other couples turned on enough to kiss in that exact moment so maybe it had a purpose) (it didn’t what the fuck was that)

Also acting like Lucas can’t spare a few hours to film it with Eliott cause he has to sTuDy FoR tHe BaC when they were filming it in the middle of a night on Friday, how is that realistic

Not giving Eliott any friends of his own and pretending like he’s a lone wolf even though he’s the biggest sunshine ever and he’s naturally drawn to people; acting like there are no other studens at his film school who could help him film his project so instead he let Lola find random people who knew nothing about filming to help him; having a bunch of random people at the screening of his film and if they were supposed to be his “friends” from the film school then I’m gonna throw hands

Acting like we will see what “minute by minute” really means and “see Eliott like we’ve never seen him before” which never happened

Switching POV for two clips only and they all revolved around Lola because they decided to go with su*cide attempt in episode 9

Also ending that episode with a su*cide note even though the next clip was before midnight on Friday

Giving Lola the worst therapist ever and a really poor attempt at cheering her up from the nurse

Enforcing that “having a loved one” is “the real reason to change” instead of sending the message that you should change for yourself first and foremost and showing that reaching out for professional help is a good thing and can really help you

Acting like ED can be cured by italian cuisine and not mentioning it again for weeks; having Daphne ask Lola not to go to rehab because they have each other and a few clips after that she’s suddenly after her first therapy (love that for her but there’s something huge missing here)

Making Lola’s life a living hell and a misery porn for 10 weeks straight

Making P*trick, Thierry and Lola’s biological dads The Worst (men are trash but it would be nice to see some good parenting on the show)

Giving all the members of La Mif two or three personality traits and not fleshing out their characters

Giving Maya a girlfriend because a season without a love triangle is a waste

Not really developing Mayla well and having their first kiss right after Eliott/Lola cursed kiss as a preemptive damage control to shut us up

Never mentioning why Lola was doing

Wasting a good chunk of the season on Tiff and that insta account and ending it with “she’s addicted to social media”

Giving Yann like one line each season after s3

Reducing Sofiane to the background dancer in s5 and s6

Hating female characters

F/M friendships are only possible if the guy is gay, otherwise cheating always had to be involved

and you know. in general. pretty much everything they did after s3.

#skam france #skamfr

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finalgirlbrainrot · 3 years

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I have two unpopular opinions 1) if roles were reversed and Dean was the one drinking blood, Dean stans would have excused the shit out of it and even liked it. 2) if none of Dean's trauma was addressed and ignored (like most of Sam's trauma is) Dean stans would fucking riot.

(sorry in advance, I ranted A Lot)

2) I'm gonna start with this one. YESYESYES I mean dean stans are already constantly unironically whining that dean's traumas never get acknowledged (EVEN THO IT'S LITERALLY NOT TRUE, HIS TRAUMAS ALREADY GET ACKNOWLEDGED MORE THAN ENOUGH. EVERY TIME HE STUBS HIS TOE. EVERYONE IS CODDLING HIM AND ASKING HIM HOW HE'S DOING. HALF THE SHOW IS LITERALLY DEAN MANPAINING ABOUT HIS TRAUMAS - but apparently that's not enough for them, so I can't imagine the uproar if it was actually true). meanwhile sam's traumas either get ignored or they get treated like a fucking joke? well I guess it's just another tuesday

I've also seen a lot of dean stans moaning about sam "forcing dean to talk about his traumas", because apparently sam actually acknowledging dean's traumas and encouraging him to open up about them and being always supportive af because he actually cares is unacceptable (and I'm willing to bet that if he didn't acknowledge them, they'd still complain because sam literally can't win no matter what he does)

but dean ignoring and never acknowledging sam's traumas (not even when he's directly responsible for said trauma) or making them all about himself (mystery spot, hallucifer, soullessness, gadreel possession) or vilifying and victim blaming him (being force-fed demon blood, soullessness, gadreel possession) or using said traumas to justify his actions (hallucifer) or making cruel, disgusting and unnecessary jokes about them ("you had a girl inside you for a whole week" [meg possession] "you know how wrong that sounds, right?" "you've like an episode of teen mom" [gadreel possession - let's talk about how these two in particular are a thousand times more disgusting than the rest since he's actually joking about a violation he's directly responsible for] "smores foot" [bmol torture] "crybaby pie" [cole torture] "you saw the [devil's] john [or butt]?" [the cage] dick of death jokes right, left and center) is perfectly acceptable behaviour

1) again YESYESYESYES. I mean, this isn't even a hypothesis, we already have an extremely similar storyline for dean - the moc - and everyone made excuses for him and glorified him, even tho he was worse than demon blood sam in every possible way

actually I wrote a rant on reddit a couple of days ago about the awful double standards between demon blood sam and moc/demon dean. I'm gonna paste it here because I'm Bitter Af

comparing demon blood sam and moc/demon demon is ironically and hysterically bitter because, logically, no matter how you spin it, s4 sam is much more understandable and easy to sympathize with - both in intentions and actions - and should have the moral high ground, while s9-10 dean was flat out awful and damaging. yet both the show and the fandom crucify sam and treat dean as some poor victim or a great martyred hero who made some great noble sacrifice and I just... don't get it. so let's break it down:

> reason for drinking blood / getting the moc

- sam: exorcising demons without harming the host, thus saving people (which apparently isn't that relevant to dean) and killing lilith, first because she sent his brother to hell and then to stop the apocalypse and because she was an actual threat

- dean: because he couldn't face the consequences of his actions after the gadreel mess and decided he wanted to kill abaddon, who, at that point, wasn't even their problem (she only became a real problem in 9x17, when they learned about the soul harvesting, so unless dean has some sort of prophetic knowledge, he had no reason to take the moc in 9x11) and was a real threat to no-one but crowley

> trusting / working with a demon

- sam: I've already said this before, but ruby was a master manipulator and went to extraordinary lengths to gain sam's trust and even managed to fool every single demon (aside from lilith obviously). as far as both brothers knew, she's done nothing but help them, saved their lives multiple times and helped them save others, fixed the colt for them, was there for sam after dean died, is basically hunted by other demons for helping them, has risked her life for them several times and even got tortured for them and was helping sam to go after the demon who was trying to start the apocalypse. sam had absolutely no valid reason not to trust her. I'd really like someone to look me in the eyes and tell me that, if anyone did everything I mentioned above, you wouldn't trust them

- dean: trusted a demon who they knew is extremely untrustworthy and self-serving and only does what's in his best interest and has screwed them over one way or another every time they worked together and has hurt people they're close to

> level of manipulation involved

- sam: as I already said, ruby was a master manipulator and spent two years carefully manipulating sam to get him to do what she wanted. not the mention everything azazel did to get him there, lilith pushing his buttons at every turn to get him to kill her and the manipulation from heaven as well, who were lying to the boys at every turn

- dean: while crowley was manipulating him, the level of manipulation isn't remotely comparable to the one sam went through is s4. crowley saying “let’s kill abaddon” and pretending to be afraid of cain is not comparable to a plan that’s been set on motion since the beginning of time and crowley wasn't the only one involved in dean getting the mark. cain was involved as well and he wasn't manipulating him (unlike sam, who was being manipulated by everyone involved). on the contrary, he was completely honest with dean and even offered to tell him more about the mark and DEAN REFUSED (like can you imagine how many problems would've been avoided if dean sat on his ass for one minute and listened to cain's warning???)

> actions

- sam: in s4 sam was trying to use something that was forced on him when he was six months old, and that he hated about himself, to do good because he felt like he had to and was literally SAVING PEOPLE and trying to stop the apocalypse, I literally still don't get why he's vilified for it????? in s4 sam killed a total of one (1) person: the possessed nurse and while that was obviously bad, 1) he was clearly upset about it and 2) I still haven't seen one (1) valid reason for why she's any different from the demons dean drained and killed in swan song or from any of the other possession victims they killed with the demon knife or the angel blade

- dean: meanwhile dean was going around murdering people left and right (also another example of fandom double standards: everyone defends moc!dean and demon!dean because "he only killed bad people" - which isn't even true, but let's say he was - and yet, I seem to remember a certain kitsune named amy pond, who was ALSO killing bad people (and not for the lolz of it, but to save her son) and dean killed her and the fandom defended him back then as well. is killing bad people okay only if dean does it?), tried to kill sam, beat cas bloody

> keeping secrets

- sam: keeping his powers and the demon blood a secret was his god given right, since it affected no-one but sam himself and the demons he was exorcising. not to mention, he had pretty good reasons for not telling dean, considering his bigotry, black and white views and judgmental attitude. and yet, he was, and still is, vilified by both the show and the fandom for keeping secrets and dean even punched him for not telling him about his abilities (something in particular about this point that absolutely drives me up the wall: in 4x04 sam accidentally revealed that he knew about what azazel did to him and dean got mad at him for not telling him about it, even tho dean himself found out about it and didn't tell sam and no-one - not the show, not the fandom and not even sam and dean themselves - notices the hypocrisy. they're literally saying that it's okay for DEAN to keeps something about SAM a secret from SAM, but not okay for SAM to keep something about HIMSELF a secret from DEAN. if you don't think that's super fucked up, then I don't know what to tell you)

- dean: no-one says anything about dean keeping the effects of the mark a secret, even tho, unlike s4 sam, lying about the mark directly affected other people and put everyone around him in danger, including sam

> general treatment

- sam: everyone treated sam like a monster in s4, dean straight up called him a monster, told him he'd hunt him if he didn't know him, forced him into a torture-detox that almost killed him, tried to control him and refused to see his point. at the end of s4 sam apologized to dean. in s5 dean repeatedly told him that he doesn't trust him. sam was blamed for everything that happened in s4 and his mistake kept getting brought up even seasons later

- dean: everyone and their mom was coddling him and helping to get rid of the mark. everyone considered the mark to be the problem, not dean himself. sam was unconditionally supportive. dean never once apologized to sam for any of the awful things he said/did to him while he had the mark. sam never once blamed dean for anything that happened in s9-10 and instead placed the blame on crowley and none of the things dean did ever got brought up again

> at the end of each arc

- sam: paid for his mistake by sacrificing himself and jumped into the cage and saved the world and got tortured by the devil himself for centuries

- dean: paid for his mistake by having his mother brought back to life

send me unpopular opinions

#redredwine92 #sORRY FOR THE MEGA RANT YFGEUFYUGY

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mashi-sims · 3 years

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Ranking AHW's S5 Episodes

I know that ranting about how bad some of the episodes this season were isn’t going to change the fact that they were, in fact, bad, but I still wanted to do an overview of this season in my opinion, and I love ranking stuff, so here it goes:

Also, I should mention that, yes, this is Cooliver biased, although I did take other plotlines into consideration, but mostly Cooliver. Also, lol, I could only add 10 photos so the #13, #12 and #11 don't get one, also they don't deserve it.

Tier 1: I wish they could be un-written, please.

13. 5x12 How Oliver Got His Groove Back

I’ll start with my least favorite episode, and the one we all wish we could unsee. This is the episode where Oliver is feeling down because the girl WE, THE AUDIENCE, just realized he liked, doesn’t like him back (which is a whole other thing), so Katie gets him a date with this girl that’s never been introduced in the show before. Oliver doesn’t want to see her, but he still does, and then he realizes she’s nice, and just like that, he’s happy again. I feel like this plot would not have been that bad if it hadn’t been so out of character, unexplained, and utterly designed to be filler for the season. Worst episode from my perspective, wouldn’t watch it again, barely watched it the first time, ugh, next-

12. 5x11 The Guardian

Same thing with this one, very uneventful episode that talks nonsense, introduces the idea of Oliver liking Lindsay and thinking they’d been dating, but nobody knew about it! How convenient! And again, doesn’t progress into anything, and it just feels out of character, forced, and like they didn’t even try to hide that it was a filler episode. Wouldn’t watch it again, I don’t even think about it, I’ve erased it from my mind. The only reason why this episode is ahead of 5x12 is because of Kathryn and Anna-Kat, and JD trying to find his egg donor, other than that, still pretty ugh.

Tier 2: Did the writers really look at their script and think; “ah, well done”?!

11. 5x07 Under Pressure

I kinda enjoyed this episode even if it didn’t include any Cooliver. I liked Anna-Kat’s storyline about not feeling her popularity and sticking to Franklin, I really really love these two together! So cute! Also, Taylor helping Oliver relax and not stress out that much was nice, although not amazing. Katie and Greg’s double date that led to a city council rivalry, I don’t care for it. Overall, I don’t know if this was intended to be a filler episode, but it totally felt like one to me; a nice episode but not one I’d watch again.

10. 5x05 Kids These Days

Eh, pretty uneventful. Katie wants Franklin and Anna-Kat to be more edgy and to take more risks, ends up in completely nothing. Oliver wants Boosterin and he accidentally drugs Greg, also ends up doing nothing for the storyline. The only thing I liked about this episode was seeing how Cooper cared about Oliver and how Oliver said “Your boy is doing both”, the Cooliver content was still good; other than that, eh. Also, the strange order in episodes this season really threw me off.

9. 5x04 Homeschool Sweet Homeschool

Nice episode, but not one of the best. Mommy blog, Cooliver moves to the basement, Andre shows up and it’s all weird now, eh. I enjoyed this episode because of the Cooliver’s interactions more than anything, but it’s not the greatest in my opinion.

Tier 3: *Sits down on the couch with popcorn and a blanket*

8. 5x06 Mother’s Little Helper

I also enjoyed Cooliver this episode. Although their drinking arc was pretty pointless and, again, ended up being nothing!!, I liked seeing them together, and that shaking they gave each other was funny. This is the episode where Tami was introduced, and I really liked her from the beginning, although I do wish they would’ve given Katie’s original second breakfast club some sort of closure so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about liking Tami and JD, eventually.

7. 5x02 Psych

This episode always made me feel stupid because I never understood what was going on with Taylor, why she didn’t take her gap year, why she never told Katie and Greg that she had gotten in, or at least make something out of it, why she decided to go to another college or if Greg got her in just so she didn’t have to take a gap year, bUT THEN I realized they didn’t actually talk about it, so I’m not the stupid one, I think.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this episode. I like Katie’s storyline of getting involved in other people’s lives after she sells her lasagna business (again, did they ever talk about that or am I stupid?)

This is the episode where we can see the change in Cooliver’s dynamic (a good thing), and the iconic line “stop bothering our boyfriends” saved my life. Having Taylor And Trip with Cooper and Oliver hanging out in the same frame is one of my favorite things and adds a few days to my life.

Franklin and Anna-Kat’s relationship also picks up in this season, and I really enjoy them in this episode. Also, Greg was very funny here, and I am grateful lol.

6. 5x08 Encourage, Discourage

I really liked how this was a Cooper-centered episode, really diving deep into his character instead of keeping him as a shallow side-character. By the way, how did Cooper get so much development and Oliver lost most of his? What was that? Anyway, Cooper saved this episode. I would’ve liked for Oliver to be a more supportive friend in this episode, but he was still there, at least.

Also, Cooper doesn’t think he’s too good for Oliver! Bless his heart.

5. 5x10 Getting Frank with The Ottos

I liked this episode very much! Again, Anna-Kat and Franklin melted my heart, but Oliver and Cooper squeezed it with Cooper’s realization of not wanting to go to Harvard, but Oliver eventually understanding and supporting him? Please, get married. Also, Oliver saying “We’re Cooliver”, and Trevor asking them if they were breaking up made my day. Could’ve been better and a bit more eventful, but it was good nonetheless.

4. 5x13 The Election

I really liked the finale, despite not having any Cooliver at all, the ending was pretty awesome, and I believe it really sets the tone for what could potentially be a great S6, that is if that’s actually happening AND if the writers stop it with the bullshit. Franklin and Anna-Kat getting engaged was very sweet, I adore them! Taylor and Trip getting really engaged was a bit cringe, but still adorable, and I love it! I just wish they had paid more attention to Oliver in this episode, but well, I guess his bang is not here yet and not every episode can be a banger. I hope that whatever comes next will be good enough that the wait will be worth it.

Tier 4: *Chef’s kiss, no pun intended*

3. 5x01 Graduation

Although this episode doesn’t really belong to this season, and it doesn’t share the same 〜vibe〜 with the rest of the episodes, since it has more of a S3-S4 energy, it’s still in S5 and I wanted to include it, too.

Not my favorite, but it’s one of the good ones imo. So much stuff happens in this episode that it almost feels cramped and overwhelming to me, with the graduation and the wedding, but I get that it was necessary to set the scene for S5 and close S4 even if it didn’t turn out the way they’d originally planned, and it came out fine considering the situation the producers were in, which can’t be said for every episode this season lol.

Taylor and Trip were adorable in this episode, Cooper was amazing, Oliver moping around was something I didn’t know I needed in my life, and Lonnie’s speech about not wanting his relationship with Greg to end, even if I never cared for his storyline, was really nice.

This episode made me think that S5 was headed toward amazing things, but not everything was good.

2. 5x09 The Heist

I love this episode because of Cooper’s development. Again, why couldn’t Oliver get that too? However, I did like how they made Oliver seem like he might’ve been a bit thirsty for his fellow Cooper over there, telling him multiple times that he’s good looking? Come on, tell us what you really mean.

Anyway, Cooliver really shone this episode, round of applause.

1. 5x03 Coupling

This episode is superior, bite me. I love everything about this episode, not only Cooliver. Katie and Greg trying to be supportive of their kids having sex with their boyfriends? Yes! Parallels between all four couples? Yes, please! Cooper and Oliver having their first married couple fight, Cooper feeling like he’s being replaced, but Oliver is doing it for the both of them and their future together? Yes! Masterpiece of an episode. I have no more to say.

Hands down, my favorite episode this season. Too bad mostly everything went downhill after that. I hope we do get a season 6 and that things pick up. This series deserves redemption, and Cooper and Oliver deserve to be happily in love together. Thank you.

#Cooliver #American Housewife #Oliver Otto #cooper bradford #cooper x oliver

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nny11writes · 3 years

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And I guess people should probably know what a bad influence I am (if they hadn't figured it out already) so "Adora Closed the Portal – Adam is a Romantic Fool" and "Comforts"

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Okay! So! “Who Wants to Live Forever” is an AU me and Venn were/are working on (it’s very back seat at this point but I don’t wanna let it go T-T). So absolutely you are an awful influence and I don’t know what I’d do without you!

Okay, so, correct me if I’m forgetting stuff because I really should’ve written our chats out somewhere lol. But essentially:

Adora manages to convince Angella she’ll be okay and grabs the sword in the portal. Not being immortal herself, Adora dies in this AU and it focuses a LOT on survivors guilt and grief.

Catra finds out that she killed Adora, and finally leaves the Horde for the Rebellion, but not until after they are in Horde Prime’s ship. I think I’ve actually posted part of one of these fics because I loved the interaction between Catra and Glimmer so much. When we were coming up with this S5 hadn’t aired yet so we had them in a cell together working through their shit.

Etheria rejoins the wider universe and Angella stares back out at Eternia, the sister planet she knew they had once when she was younger. Angella is struggling as she starts being forced to confront/deal with her past from before despondos, and there are all sorts of awful politics involved (Eternia was draining Etheria of magic, but I can’t remember if it was in conjunction with the First Ones or not). She can’t really handle all these things hitting at once.

Glimmer and Catra go to Eternia to represent their planet and meet Adora’s biological family. Adora Closed the Portal - Adam is a Romantic Fool

So originally the AU didn’t have a name so we were roughly calling it “Adora Closed the Portal” because that’s where it becomes canon divergent.

This is a story where Adam is a total romantic fool and himbo.

He has noticed the romantic tension between Catra and Glimmer and keeps trying to force them to talk about it by locking them into rooms. Because he keeps forgetting that Glimmer can teleport. Eventually they give up and talk about things a little bit (aka they talk more about Adora and their pasts then their relationship lol) but really only because after being so angry Catra loses it laughing. Because, well, really. What an Adora thing to do! As they talk they both realize that they’re in Love love with one another but don’t want to say anything. Catra is a gremlin and Glimmer tries to tell her of in Hordish, which is a language she doesn’t have a great mastery of but is excellent in both accidentally and purposefully flirting in.

Adam hears them laughing and opens the door to congratulate them, makes an ill timed sex joke, tries to flee for his life, and once again forgets that Glimmer can teleport.

Comforts

This is the fic where Catra and Glimmer learn to trust one another by helping support one another.

Catra tries to pull it together one more time when they first arrive to their cell on Prime’s ship and instead has a complete breakdown. Glimmer tries to comfort her (w-what? no shut up it’s not just because she feels bad that Catra wanted to die via suicide by cop princess.) and is semi-successful? That night Catra whispers to Glimmer that she can do anything she wants to her, that it’s okay if she wants to hurt or kill her. Catra is Not Having a Good Time.

Glimmer hates that and tries to comfort Catra again. She cups her face in her hands and gets clawed for accidentally triggering her. They then get into another fight and don’t talk for a while. Later on Glimmer tries to comfort her again by doing something Adora used to do all the time, assuming it’s a Horde thing when actually it was a Catra thing that Adora adopted. They go to sleep and Catra wakes up to Glimmer crying in the middle of the night and forces herself to purr to comfort Glimmer. “ It’s not the last time they’ll curl together. It’s not the last time they’ll support each other. It’s not the last time they’ll lay face to face. Nor the last time they’ll let their walls down for one another. It’s not the last by a long shot.It’s a wonderful, fathomless, limitless first. “

#Who Wants to Live Forever Series #glitra #she ra #spop #god I love this AU and I just need to go digging for notes lol #venn364

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books-and-milkshakes · 3 years

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Hey ho there, I'm not sure if I already asked this, and of course feel free to ignore it, but I wonder: if you had full creative control of the show, how would you run season 5? You can pick and choose whatever leaks you want to include.

Thank you for the ask! I had fun reading all these speculations. Honestly, I haven’t really speculated on S5, mostly because it makes me sad. Who needs canon when you can have AU’s?

My gut reaction is that I want Bughead to do long distance and they make it work. Then when everyone gets back to Riverdale, they are the old married couple who judge all their friends drama. However with the s4 ending in mind, I also wouldn’t be mad about these character developments.

Betty: She actually flees Riverdale as soon as graduation is over. She kind of snaps and just wants to leave this town that has caused her so much pain and trauma. She goes to college with Cheryl and Toni and completely focuses on her school. Eventually, she is forced to go to therapy and truly starts working through all her issues. I want Betty to be happy and have a support system, because the show always isolates her and lets her go through hell. I just want these years to be some sort of healing for her. She also dates around a little in college but doesn’t get anywhere near a real relationship. She does date a few girls though. She gets hired by the FBI, but she does not fit in, always fighting against the rules. She does meet her girlfriend while they are working on a mission together and they start seriously dating. Betty thinks this will finally let her move on.

Jughead: I find it hard to imagine Jughead out of Riverdale. I think he loves Riverdale and doesn’t want to let it go. Especially now that his dad is doing better and his sister is back and they live in this beautiful house. He finally has the family he always wanted and he doesn’t want to leave that behind. We know Jughead to be loyal and a total idealist (even if he does not want to admit that). He does college from home and works at Pop’s where he meets Tabitha and they strike up a friendship. Jughead does not date anyone. In the beginning, he thinks that he still needs to work through his breakup, but eventually he realises that he just doesn’t feel the need to date or have any kind of sexual relationships.

Veronica: After finding out about the betrayel of her boyfriend and best friend, she leaves for New York. She doesn’t even attend the graduation. She is so heartbroken that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with these people. My hope for her is that she will thrive. She opens some of the most succesfull businesses in New York and gets celebrity status. She also gets to cut ties with Hiram.

Archie: I’m going to admit that I don’t tend to think about Archie that much. I do like this idea of him being single and being happy about it. He tries dating a whole bunch, but he is never happy with any of his relationships. Then when he decides to stay single for a while he really starts to figure himself out and deal with everything that he has gone through. He stays in Riverdale and completely throws himself into firefighting.

Bughead: Betty and Jughead don’t break up over the kiss. At least not immediately. Betty tells him and they work through it. However when graduation comes and Betty wants to leave Riverdale that is when they break up. When Betty gets called back to Riverdale to investigate the Mothman murders, she really doesn’t want to. Because it is the town of her past and because she knows that Jughead is there. The moment they see each other they both know that they are still in love, but they’re stubborn. Betty reluctantly asks Jug to join her investigation because she has been hitting a wall. I wouldn’t let them get back together immediately. There will be a lot of investigating and pining. Small touches, cramped spaces and so much eye fucking. When they finally have a break through, Betty shoves Jughead against a wall.

Beronica: The other pairing that I’m most invested in. I want them to be amazing friends. I have this headcanon that they are each others person. But it has to be earned. Through therapy Betty realises that she feels most guilty about Veronica, because they never got to talk after the truth came out. So Betty calls Veronica again and again till she finally picks up. There is shouting and crying and apologizing. Eventually Veronica flies across the country and they have a sleepover where they make up. In the end, they are closer than ever.

This is getting long so for the others I will be quicker.

Choni: They break up during college. Toni realises that she needs to spend time alone and this really breaks Cheryl, but also ultimately lets her grow.

Varchie: Obviously breaks up and doesn’t get back together. When they eventually meet again, they realise they have nothing in common. They make up, but won’t ever be close again.

Cheronica: They eventually get together. This is a couple I always wanted to be together. They will be an absolute power couple (after Cheryl has worked on herself)

Toni: I want Toni to be the queen of Riverdale and the serpents. The serpents will be an actual gang and they rule the southside. She is succesful and happy and single. Just enjoying her life.

#long post #riverdale season 5

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dylanobrienisbatman · 3 years

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For the ship thing #15 and #18 (I'm SUPER curious about 15)

Ohhhh okay... okay... lets see lol

15. Fave Poly Ship

Augh i feel like I have so many, but my fave lately was probably the Polyam Belter Fam from The Expanse!!! Not only is it a canon polycule, but is a canon polycule of SPACE PIRATES!!!! I loved that the show was completely unapologetic about their relationship, and that the show runners were clear about the type of dynamic they had. They emphasised that these people don't just work together, they live together, on these ships, and they are a family in every sense of the word. They just also happen to be a polycule of super hot space pirates to boot. I also really loved that they were allowed to have conflict between them by the end of s5, and that it didn't revolve around jealousy or anything to do with their actual relationship. The fact that they sort of split into two parts at the end of the season was so sad, but it was sad and not annoying because it was an earned conflict, and it didn't negate the love these people had for each other. In fact, you felt the love even more when they decided to leave, because you could feel it breaking all of their hearts. Super excited for what comes next for them!

18. Guilty Pleasure Ship

I'm not really sure about this one tbh. I don't have a ton of ships that are like, gross or 'bad' or anything. I don't really ship 'dark' ships, it's not really my thing, and I don't really feel 'bad' about any of the stuff I ship, so the only thing i can really think of is that I LOVE the chemistry between Lu and Valerio on Elite, and I like... half ship it and hate myself for it. They are half siblings, so it's absolutely incest, and its very very gross, but god if Jorge and Danna don't have the most insane, fire chemistry I've ever seen. I also liked the fact that, even though it was totally gross and they should definitely NOT be doing it, it was framed as a way for them to feel loved in their childhood when they were both totally alone and given no support or love from their family. I also really loved that even after Valerio exposed their relationship and ended things with her, she still stood up for him and basically gave up her future and her family to protect him, because in their own little weird fucked up way he was the only person who had ever actually loved Lu and been there for her. So it's a weird mix of like, loving their chemistry, understanding the way they came to be in the totally fucked up relationship they're in and feeling a lot of sympathy for them, loving the support and care and love they have for each other, and also being completely grossed out with myself for kind of shipping an incest ship. This is my great shame, y'all.

#the expanse #polyam belter fam #elite #lu x valerio

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fakecrfan · 3 years

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:DDD my friend I’m so glad you reblogged this I would love your director’s commentary on Domain of the Unseen, as that fic has living in my head since I read it.

(Domain of the Unseen for the Director’s commentary ask!)

Ohhhh this fic! This one was fun to write. The whole reason this fic became a thing was because I was in the RQ discord server at the time it was revealed that Martin had his own domain. I went “hey!! Probably not possible but wouldn’t it be cool if JON was in Martin’s domain? :DDD”

“Wow what a cool idea tell us more!” said absolutely nobody.

So, thus starved for people to talk about angst with, I had to run off and write fic about it.

She’s in both places at once,’’ Martin finishes. “Both in the burning building, and being eaten alive by insects. Wonderful.’’

“Bi-location isn’t any trouble in this world,’’ Jon says, and there is a bit of a grimace to it. “Not if it means the Eye can squeeze more terror out of you.’’

I had to come up with an excuse to have Jon both be walking the world, empowered, while also being tormented forever in Martin’s domain. Luckily for me, s5 canon runs on nightmare logic, (aka “whatever hurts the most is true”) so I decided that bi-location was a reasonable enough thing to happen in the apocalypse.

“If the Eye can extract terror from you, it will. As you should know,’’ he says. “You have your own domain too, Martin, but you also are—you still suffered in that Lonely realm.’’ (emphasis added after the fact.)

Next is my quick justification for that logic. This world wants to extract more suffering from people. So no one gets out of it completely.

And then, of course, I imply that this applies to Martin as well. That part of him will always be in the Lonely, suffering. He’s just blocked it out, for a time. :)

But wait! If people can bi-locate, and avatars can be trapped in domains, and that probably applies to Martin, then does it...?

“Wait.’’ Martin knows it’s going to hurt, but he feels like it’s his responsibility to know who he’s hurting. “’Who are they?’’

Who indeed, Martin? Who is someone who you’ve hurt? :D

Martin looks to the figure’s hand. They are holding a tape recorder.

“Jon?’’ Martin asks, afraid.

And then, of course, Jon can’t help but reveal his own unseen hurt.

He thought that he’d wake up to some kind of welcome. Stupid. As though anyone would care. As though he would deserve their care. He wishes they’d go back to yelling at him. He wishes they’d look at him, at least, instead of turning their eyes away.

So, obviously, this is Jon’s... fear of social exclusion based on his experiences waking up from the coma. Now, the thing is--this is the apocalypse. Do I think it’s true that none of the Archives crew cared about him and that he deserves that?

No, and no.

Everyone is cold and sometimes cruel to Jon after he wakes up from the coma, yes. But that’s not the sum total of their actions to him, and it doesn’t mean they totally hate him as much as he fears.

Basira, in canon, brings him coffee, makes sure he eats and drinks, and gets him new, better clothes. Georgie tells Martin that it’s not that she thinks Jon doesn’t deserve saving, just that she’s going to get hurt and exhausted if she tries and she doesn’t believe anything she does will make a difference to him, anyway. Daisy, who clearly isn’t used to being soft, reaches out and makes sure he has emotional support.

All of them care about him. But also? All of them are--emotionally-- at the equivalent of where Jon was in s2. Their allies have died in an explosion. They’re tired. They’re paranoid. They’ve just fought off a siege from a monster who tried to kill them all. They can’t leave the Institute because they get attacked, so they’re trapped living there. And they can’t be any more sure Jon is really Jon than Jon could be sure Tim wasn’t a murderer.

Just like Jon couldn’t be there for Tim and Martin in the midst of his breakdown, Melanie, Basira, Martin, and Georgie can’t be there for Jon in the midst of theirs. It’s just--a sad reality of people, that they have limits and fail each other in the midst of massive stress.

But Jon just--can’t see that?

Jon is still in a bad place and he catastrophizes like a motherfucker. So he sees all of this and he can’t step back and go “Okay, everyone’s really been through it. It’s not entirely about me.” No, instead he goes: “Everyone 100% HATES me, and also it’s my fault! I did ALL of this! I deserve anything bad that happens to me, any pain I feel.”

And of course, the apocalypse latches onto that subjective fear and turns it into its own reality.

But for all he puts on his kindest, nicest voice, the One He Loves turns away.

And Martin! Of all the rejections that Jon received in s4, Martin’s hurt the worst (or at least, so I posit in this fic.) Because Martin was the closest, because he loved Martin, because he was used to receiving emotional support from Martin and then it was abruptly withdrawn. Of course that is going to sting like nothing else.

But we know, objectively, that everything Martin did at this point was for Jon. That Martin didn’t stop loving him at all! That he was willing to give everything for Jon, even to a suicidal degree.

But even though that’s the truth, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that for a moment, Jon believed that he was entirely unloved, forgotten, his pain unseen--and he deserved it.

“It’s not true,’’ Martin says.“I know,’’

Jon manages. “Subjective reality, and all that.”

Jon is wiser now, honestly. He has a lot more knowledge and perspective, so he knows that his fears about Martin abandoning him aren’t true. But again--the the apocalypse makes it so that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Jon fears it. It can turn that fear into very real pain, and make him feel that pain at all times.

That’s what it’s like to deal with insecurities IRL too.

Part of Jonathan Sims will always be here. Knowing this has happened before. Knowing it can happen in the ever uncertain future. Fearing what series of mistakes he might make that could cause him to be abandoned again.

Psychological pain, fear, can hound you at all moments, even over things that are done or aren’t entirely true. It’s true that it is quite possible that Jon will lose more people’s love in the future! It’s possible that Martin will get pissed off and leave him, or that Jon himself will fuck up in a way that ruins everything. These are all real possibilities that can happen to anyone.

And as long as you know it’s possible, your mind can use that possibility to torment you.

That’s what I was using the apocalypse/the fearscapes here to represent, actually. The... continuity of psychological pain. How some fears, even ones that seem fairly normal like “what if my partner leaves me” or “what if all my friends hate me” can live with us every moment for all of our lives, unseen and unknown to those around us.

But the whole thing is making Martin upset, and so instead of saying all of that, Jon puts on his softest smile. It hurts on his face, a pain that sears down into his chest.

“I love you too, Martin.’‘

I’m a bit torn on this. Is it a failure of the relationship, that Jon doesn’t feel like he can be honest with Martin here? Perhaps. But I personally don’t think so.

If Jon told Martin here that he’s afraid of him, that he will always be afraid of him, that loving Martin means that Martin will always give Martin the unique ability to hurt him--would that help? Would it take Jon’s pain away? Or would it just put more stress on Maritn.

So Jon bites his tongue on this one. It’s not Martin’s fault, of course. Martin is doing his best to comfort him here, saying all the right things.

Some things really do have to be dealt with alone. Some pains really do have to remain unseen. Or at least, that’s the conclusion Jon comes to here.

#director's commentary #one more director's commentary ask to go #damn this one got long oops #pensivetense #my post

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boltlightning · 4 years

Text

man. i know this episode deserves accolades out the ass and we have collectively talked it to death as a community, but the back half of mr. yin presents is so, so powerful. let’s dive in:

chief cares about her people above all else; you see her, for the first time ever, arm up and offer to drive when she knows where yin has taken juliet. she is using every tool available to her to make sure her team is safe, she constantly insists on shawn/gus/henry (who are civilians) being given stricter security, she takes the blame when juliet disappears.....she cares SO MUCH.

henry would do absolutely anything for shawn. they were a bit cool this season — there’s a few moments where henry sardonically notes that he’s almost always the one who helps shawn unravel his case. he literally bails shawn out from a false accusation in think tank. but when he knows abigail is in trouble, and knows shawn is going to save her alone, he takes a job he didn’t really want just so he can go after his son.

AND BOTH OF THEM IMMEDIATELY PUT ON THEIR CHARMERS TO KEEP ABIGAIL CALM. without hesitation, henry leaps right in with his swiss and cuts abigail free under the pier. shawn and henry spend so much time consumed with their differences that they don’t ever acknowledge their similarities, and especially not the good similarities. both these men have everflowing compassion that are overlaid by their affable manner (shawn) or rigid competence (henry) and it is so gratifying to see them come together at the climax of the episode

gus is just the...the bravest and kindest man. he cares so much about shawn, and has really come to trust and love the entire team. it is amazing to see him seriously involved in the episode, as good as his support system for shawn was in the first yang episode. shawn may have the psychic-ness, but gus is the heart of psych. gus is (very realistically!) afraid of these terrible situations they find themselves in and hates the sight of blood and is adamant about not becoming the casualty of a slasher movie trope...but he is the first to go after juliet when they lose sight of her in yin’s trap. he picks up her gun and chases after her in a secret tunnel. he goes to the clock tower when shawn cannot because they trust each other SO MUCH, and keeps the wire from snapping even though it is the mechanized clocktower for an entire city because he is a brilliant and brave and strong man and i love him with all my HEART

no one needs Another Essay About Lassiter And Juliet from Me, Bolt Lightning, but god. i’d noticed a few episodes in that their dynamic in s4 has shifted to lassiter being overly friendly with juliet because he trusts her that much, while juliet is a lot more confident in their relationship...but their trust and love runs so goddamn deep. for the first time in the entire series (and i think for the rest of the series total!), lassiter directly defies chief’s orders. he sets off on his own to go get juliet as soon as they figure out the clue and doesn’t even stop to consider what it may do to his career if he does. carlton lassiter!! carlton fucking lassiter who, one episode ago, was telling everyone to shut the hell up so he could chase a fantastical lead and get better press coverage. he is petty and mean and calloused but he is loyal to his very bones, and juliet has earned every ounce of his trust.

and juliet...i feel like women who are competent and in actionable roles often get written into a box where they’re defined by their badassery. they aren’t allowed vulnerable moments because it doesn’t suit their image as an asskicking action girl. but juliet is both in spades in this episode; she is fearless and dedicated, and walks into what she knows is a trap because it’s what needs to be done. she knows the risks. she does it anyway. and juliet has never been a damsel in distress — most of the time she and lassiter are bailing shawn and gus out from danger — so the way she faces this says so much about her. that she reads yin’s clue as he directs, and still tries to let shawn know that abigail can be saved too with what little opportunity she has? even though shawn has kind of been an ass to her for the last year? fucking STELLAR.

she stares straight ahead the entire time she’s on the clocktower, even after gus and lassiter save her, and you can see the absolute terror and eerie acceptance in her eyes. she knows shawn will go to abigail, and she would prefer it. abigail is a civilian, she is not.

maggie lawson is so talented jesus christ. like they all are but this performance is so phenomenal

and then we get that amazing, powerful, wordless shot of her and lassiter at the end. anyone would be rattled after that, and juliet, who is always a beacon of understanding and acceptance and cheer, is going through shock. i actually paid enough attention to lipread on the rewatch and i’m pretty sure she’s insisting to lassiter “i’m fine, i’m fine” and lassiter just says “you don’t need to be fine” and she collapses against him. that fucking shit kills me man. carlton lassiter, the king of emotional repression, tells her it’s ok to not be fine. god. strike me down where i stand

this is getting unwieldy but shawn is the person of the hour. truly. he is such an amazing protagonist. i have so many gripes with how he’s written in certain spots of s4, and i’m sure i’ll talk more about that in s5 and s6, but good god. everything that happens in this episode is his worst nightmare — people he cares for are hurt because he can’t crack a case fast enough. his very profession puts abigail in danger. he has always been flippant, and wise-cracking, and even a little careless, but his intention was to put bad guys away and make a living. he knows the dangers of his career and his loved ones being put in harm’s way has always, ALWAYS made him deeply uncomfortable. and in this episode he confronts what is maybe the worst example of it in the show

he really, truly cares for abigail, and that this completely unpredictable side effect of his job likely ate him up alive for so long. he may have been a bad boyfriend, but he was so willing to see what she needed from him to make the relationship work after her rescue...shawn is also a character you rarely see vulnerable. he has a gun pointed at his head every second episode but he is almost always certain that some serendipitous event will happen to get him out alive. but this was all him. and he bares his heart to abigail, without any of his wordsmithery or reference-laden snark. this case took so much from him. and it truly beat him down the entire time

lighter notes:

i love buzz mcnab and he loves the team so much. tall king

mary’s death is really goddamn sad and it makes me doubletake at the way he’s been portrayed in the musical/second movie

if you read all this thank you very much please talk to me about carlton and juliet

#bolt watches psych #this show fucking rules

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panharmonium · 4 years

Note

Hey! Loving the Merlin takes on ur blog, and I wanted to ask—what are your opinions on Morgana? Haven’t seen a lot of talk abt her. I loved her, esp in season 1, which is also my fav season cuz after that I feel like things started to make less and less sense, lmao. I understand her descent into villainy (mostly, but why does she start to hate Gwen so quickly? feel like that could’ve been handled better) but I would’ve loved to see some solidarity between her and merlin!!!!!

hi there! :D

so, i LOVE morgana. most of what i’ve said about her has been in the tags of gifsets that are now scattered haphazardly around my blog; i don’t think there are larger pieces yet besides my finale round-up (urgh lol), and most of that is just a function of time - i can’t possibly write expansive tracts of meta about every single merlin thing i love, because i love the whole show; i’d never leave my computer again. i generally sit down to write long essays about whatever grabs my mind at a particular moment, even though there are a bazillion other things out there i love just as much. XD

but with morgana, i also feel like part of the reason i haven’t written much about her is because up until three and a half weeks ago (....oh my god, was it THREE AND A HALF WEEKs??? IT FEELS LIKE A YEAR) i hadn’t even finished the series yet, and the whole time i was watching this show i was sort of...waiting to see whether they would finally tie her arc together. i didn’t feel like i could say too much about what was happening with her, because my evaluation of her arc was going to depend on where the writers finally chose to take it and whether they brought it to the place i thought it needed to go.

and...they didn’t, obviously, which is what i sort of suspected would happen, though i was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt all the way up until the end, because i don’t believe they ever wrote themselves into a corner with her. there were things they could have handled with more depth, definitely, but i do not believe that they ever dug themselves into a hole they couldn’t climb out of.

i. what happened to you, morgana

essentially my opinion (just mine; nobody else is obligated to share it) of morgana is this: that the series ended before her arc was over.

to me, season 5 was the nadir in our characters’ journeys. they had reached their lowest point, their...“darkest hour,” to quote the show itself. and in many familiar storytelling formats (the ones that have the most in common with bbc merlin, at least), we take our characters to a moment where they hit rock bottom, where everything is going wrong and things seem hopeless, and then we light a spark under their butts that starts the process where they fight their way out of it. the nadir isn’t the endpoint of the curve; it’s the point where characters start climbing their long, slow way out of the pit. it’s what they have to overcome in order to earn their eventual triumphant ending.

to me, season 5 was that nadir, for morgana and everyone else. i never would have imagined season 5 to be the final season of the show, if i hadn’t known it was beforehand. i would have read season 5 as the show’s ‘empire strikes back’ moment. the episode that ends with our team losing, but with a whole other episode remaining where they can fight to Make It Right.

i view merlin bbc as tantamount to a cancelled tv show, to be honest. i know that’s not necessarily what happened (though it does feel pretty weird that they officially announced S5 would be the final season only four weeks before the finale was about to air?? very bizarre), but regardless of the actual behind-the-scenes-whatever, the fact of the matter is that for me, the series doesn’t end. it stops. and those two things are not the same.

this is particularly relevant to morgana because, as you said, there are aspects of her character arc that weren’t handled as deftly as they could have been, but if the show had brought morgana’s arc to the place where it felt like they were going in 5.09, they could have rescued so much of what came before.

to get into more detail -

i think the biggest issue with morgana’s arc for me isn’t so much what she does, it’s what we’re not shown as she does it.

i fully believe that morgana would eventually start working to ensure uther’s downfall. (obviously. she’s been presented as the voice of moral authority on this show since episode one, and there’s no reason to believe that she wouldn’t ultimately start rebelling against the king’s oppressive policies.) i believe that she would reject arthur, eventually. and i believe that she would reject gwen, too. but i don’t believe the show illustrates enough how painful this would be for her, or how conflicted it would make her feel.

and again, as i said, there are my own personal opinions, couched in...some personal experience with certain kinds of family conflict - but i do understand where morgana’s bitterness toward arthur and gwen comes from. arthur, for all that he’s “a better man than [his] father,” never fully breaks with uther the way morgana does. he has his own little rebellions, yes, but ultimately he always falls in line. he tolerates his father’s actions even if he doesn’t necessarily agree with them, and he continues to support uther even after uther is revealed to have lied about being morgana’s illegitimate father. and because of this tacit acceptance of uther’s poor behavior, arthur reaps benefits and privileges galore. morgana is cast out with nothing, whereas arthur, who didn’t even take a stand for justice, wants for nothing. arthur is sitting pretty on the throne of camelot because he continued to bestow his honor and respect upon a man who deserved neither of those things, because he chose the villain of the series over his sister, even knowing what uther did to her. and that’s gutting, for her. he betrayed her.

(and there are things to be said on arthur’s end of this, too, of course - morgana doesn’t ever confide in him; she doesn’t come to him for help or give him a chance to even be informed about what happened to her before she jumps into invading camelot and dethroning uther - so for arthur, her sudden turnaround comes as a total shock, and HE feels betrayed, like he has no choice but to fight her - i mean, it’s just a big mess.)

but i understand why she hates him. he continues to stand with a man who did demonstrable evil, despite the harm that was specifically done to morgana herself. and by shutting up and letting atrocities be committed in front of him, arthur escapes the harm that morgana suffers for speaking up. i understand why morgana is so bitter about it.

and gwen is a very similar situation - from morgana’s point of view, gwen is playing the arthur to arthur’s uther. gwen sides with arthur over morgana, despite knowing full well that arthur’s policies harm people with magic. gwen abandons morgana for her love interest, and for morgana that’s just like - “why would you do that? i was your friend before he ever cared about you, i loved you before he ever did - don’t you see the evil he’s perpetuating? don’t you care what he does to people like me?”

that’s why morgana tells merlin, “don’t think i don’t understand loyalty just because i’ve got no one left to be loyal to.” she feels like everybody who supposedly cared for her ultimately dumped her because her situation interfered with their comfortable, morally uncomplicated lives. they weren’t willing to acknowledge what was done to her, and they stuck by the man responsible for it, and it seems incomprehensible to her, that they would make that choice, when his misdeeds are known and out in the open. i can’t blame her for wanting to raze the city to the ground.

HOWEVER.

while i believe that all these things are completely plausible, i don’t believe that the series shows us appropriately how these things would be tearing morgana apart inside, underneath the rage and the armored front of ‘you brought this on yourself, so burn in hell, i don’t care.’

there are moments where the show gets it right. when morgana wakes up after uther dies and says that she felt his pain - it’s not presented as gloating; she’s - almost confused. uncertain. like she doesn’t know what she feels. when she confronts arthur at the end of season 4 (i thought we were friends/as did i) there’s real pain under the surface there. when they confront each other at the beginning of season 5, too (what happened to you, morgana/i grew up) - you can feel the undercurrent of something deeper there, too. and that moment with mordred in 5.09, when he appeals to her humanity (i hope one day you will find the love and compassion which used to fill your heart) - that is an amazing scene. the show absolutely nails that moment. morgana hesitates. you can see the grief and the - the conflict written all over her face. it’s perfect. it’s exactly the turn i would have expected morgana’s arc to be taking, at that time in the series.

but then the show just stopped. and without taking morgana’s arc further - without following it through all the way to its conclusion - there’s never any resolution to all the ways the show dropped the ball earlier. all the moments where morgana appears to be just...evil-smirking her way through her revenge, the way she suddenly seems to have no feelings for gwen whatsoever, the utterly lost opportunity that was the “enchanted gwen” arc (which could have been such a powerful exploration of their broken relationship) - all those could have eventually made sense and fit into a narrative where morgana’s conflicted feelings finally begin to escape the stranglehold in which she has them choked, where we start to see the pain of these destroyed relationships rising to the surface.

i can understand how morgana would just - shut off her feelings about these people. she had to close her heart to them - the alternative would have been too painful. but underneath - we know it wouldn��t be that easy. we know it eats at her. and it’s just - so incredibly frustrating that the series was starting to go there - the moment with mordred in 5.09 feels like the beginning of morgana’s big crisis of faith - and then the show just Stops.

so the thing about morgana for me is that, like you said, the show does drop the ball on illustrating her quick descent into evil-villain territory, and they especially drop the ball on her break with gwen, but all of it could have been salvaged, if they had committed to following her arc all the way through to its conclusion. instead they chose to kill her (and everybody else, lol) just as her deep-rooted internal conflicts were finally starting to rise to the surface.

ii. we can find another way/there is no other way (aka the merlin problem)

i’ll say right up front that anything i say here is, as always, just my personal interpretation of things. this is not necessarily the One True Way this show is meant to be understood; it’s just my own preferred read.

i have definitely seen some things in my brief foray into internet fandom that are sort of...piling on merlin for abandoning morgana or “gaslighting” her, most of which seem to be centered around the beginning of episode 2.03, which is weird to me, because the whole point of that episode is that merlin does help morgana, in the end - he’s the one who doesn’t gaslight her. he defies gaius and takes her to the druids, specifically so they can tell her yes, she does have magic. he tries to distract the attacking knights in order to enable morgana to escape with the druids permanently, like she wants. and when the attempt fails, and they’re brought back to camelot, he comes to morgana’s chambers specifically to check on her and to assure her that he won’t reveal her secret to anyone, and she’s grateful for this - she thanks him, she’s appreciative of everything he did for her, she feels comforted to know the truth and to know that someone else knows it, too. this episode ends with their relationship at a high point - it’s overwhelmingly positive, and it doesn’t take a nosedive until 1.12, when morgana gets in way over her head and merlin thinks she’s trying to murder them all. (and even in that episode, it’s worth it to note, merlin is still covering for her magic in front of arthur, giving her chances.)

(and obviously also, of course, the end of that particular situation gets Real Bad Real Fast, which could be a whole post in and of itself, so let’s stay focused on the earlier eps, for now.)

the criticism of merlin in those earlier episodes seems to stem solely from the fact that he doesn’t out himself to morgana, which i can understand - i mean, i like the idea of a ‘merlin+morgana secret magic squad’ AU as much as anyone - but i’ll be honest and say that nowadays, i’m not quite as willing to condemn him for it as i might have been on my first viewing.

i’m not willing to condemn him for it at all, actually.

(and again - as i said, these are my own opinions! everybody else is welcome to have different opinions! we all engage with media differently, and there isn’t a right or wrong way to approach this situation, just whichever way feels best to you.)

so, for me, i’m not interested anymore in telling merlin that he should have revealed himself to anyone, at that point in the story. it would be different if he had been like - continuing to tell morgana ‘oh, no, you don’t have magic, don’t be crazy,’ or if he had been pretending to hate magic like everyone else so he could blend in, but he doesn’t do that, at the end of the episode. he sends her to the druids. he chases after her when he realizes she's in danger. he openly acknowledges her magic, he supports her in having it, he makes sure she knows she has nothing to fear from him. by the end of 2.03, he’s gone to great lengths to help her; he’s already made certain that she knows he’s on her side and that she can trust him. she clearly knows that he accepts her and that he supports her - those are his responsibilities to her as a fellow human and as a friend, and those are exactly the responsibilities he makes sure to fulfill. she knows her secret is safe with him.

now - whether or not merlin feels safe enough to out himself, after making sure morgana knows he accepts and supports her, is his own business.

i think there are a number of reasons why it wouldn’t be fair for me to criticize merlin for continuing to conceal his secret, the first of which is something i already mentioned in another piece - that a marginalized person’s first responsibility is to their own safety, when forced into hiding under oppressive social conditions. merlin isn’t obligated to reveal himself for anybody. he’s not obligated to put himself in danger out of some kind of...responsibility to the community. (not at this point, anyway. it gets more complicated later, as merlin becomes more powerful, which i also address in that other piece, but that’s all in the future for him and not relevant at this moment.)

i think it would be easy for me to forget that merlin isn’t safe, in the early seasons. we’re so used to thinking of merlin as ‘the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the earth,’ because that’s what we keep being told he’s going to become, but again, that’s all so far in the future for him. merlin in the early seasons can do some things with his abilities, but not consistently, and not to the level where we can reasonably expect him to resist the entirety of camelot’s army, if they were to come for him. merlin is in real danger, and he’s not evil for being unwilling to share a secret about himself that would ensure his death, if it somehow got back to the wrong people.

second - i don’t think it would be fair for me to discount merlin’s personal history, either. merlin’s life didn’t start in camelot, and he hasn’t even been in camelot for all that long, comparatively, by the time we get to S2. season one takes place over a few months, starting in either spring or summer and ending in the fall (after the referenced harvest in 1.10/1.11, but before winter sets in). the weather is nice by time season 2 starts, so we can probably assume that S2 takes place once winter has passed (although, it’s technically possible that S2 takes place over the same autumn as S1, I guess...but it’s not made clear to us, timeline-wise.) either way, we just really have to remember that merlin’s stay in camelot by the time we reach 2.03 is still this blip compared to the rest of his life.

it would be very easy for me to say that merlin should have told morgana, that there’s no way she would ever have given him up - and i probably would have said that very thing, after the first time i watched the show - but like - nowadays, i really think i have to step back from that certainty and be a little more gentle. we say we “know” that morgana wouldn’t have willingly betrayed merlin’s secret at that point, and sure, i agree, that’s probably true - but does merlin know that?

of course not!

i think he hopes that. i think he would dearly like to believe that. i also think merlin grew up in a situation where he couldn’t fully trust even the people he’d known all his life, with two (vital!!!) exceptions, and he has been in camelot with a bunch of brand-new people for less than a year, and he can’t be certain of them, however much he wants to be. (and that’s not even considering the possibility of accidental betrayals, or coerced ones - remember, the witchfinder shows up in S2 also, as just one example.)

remember that exchange merlin has with freya, later this season?

“you can’t always trust people.”

“i know. that’s why i left home.”

merlin is not used to showing himself to people. he has been taught all his life to NEVER, EVER show himself to anybody. everyone in camelot who finds out about his magic finds out either by accident (like gaius or lancelot), or necessity (like freya and gilli - though gilli is interesting, because i think merlin’s decisions there are motivated precisely by the choices he didn’t make with morgana - which i’ll go into more later).

in twenty-odd years, merlin has only ever told one person about his magic. and even that generous assumption requires a little bit of inferencing for us to determine, though i think it’s likely enough, if not confirmable.

(i am, in case it’s unclear, referencing 1.10, when merlin is explaining to will why hunith sent him away to camelot: “when she found out you knew - she was so angry.” that, to me, has always been a signifier that merlin told will about his magic, as opposed to will finding out by coincidence. i know there are a lot of headcanons floating around out there about various...accidental situations that may have occurred which forced merlin to reveal his magic in front of will, and those are all obviously totally fun to play with, but after hearing this particular line - i never understood that to be the case, to be honest. we’ve seen hunith enough to have a pretty solid understanding of her character. she and merlin are always easy and gentle together, she’s so kind and calm and thoughtful - i can’t imagine that she wouldn’t have understood, if there had been some kind of accident that forced merlin’s hand. she’d be just as afraid for his future safety, of course, and she would have wished he’d told her right away, but she wouldn’t have been “so angry.”

...she might, however, have been “so angry” if she’d found out that merlin had specifically undermined every sacrifice she’d ever made to keep him safe/ignored every single one of her warnings/rejected every cautious thing she’d been telling him for his entire life and TOLD somebody about his magic when it wasn’t remotely necessary. that’s the only scenario i can imagine that would prompt merlin to say “she was SO angry” in that half-awed, half-intimidated tone, with that little headshake, like it was such a singular event, like it’s still formidable for him to remember.)

so anyway, that said - it’s too easy for me to say ‘he should have told morgana/gwaine/gwen etc; they would never have turned on him,’ as if it would have been such a simple thing for him to do, as if there were no dangers associated with their knowledge even if they would never have willingly given him up, as if he was refusing to do it because he didn’t want to, or because his fears were overblown, or because he was foolish for thinking they would ever hate him for his gifts. i think that really minimizes the reality of his struggle, and the danger of his situation. without the pressure of some crisis to force his hand, merlin has only ever willingly revealed himself to one person. that person is dead. that person died specifically ensuring that merlin could stay safe and hidden from the rest of the world, morgana included - merlin’s continued secrecy is a gift that was bought at an impossibly high price, and it’s not simple for him to contemplate squandering it, especially with no guarantee that things will turn out okay.

because there IS no guarantee that things will turn out okay! a lot of the “merlin should have told morgana” online talk centers around the idea that knowing about merlin’s magic would have kept morgana from feeling alone/betrayed, thus preventing her from turning to the “evil” methods she uses later, but again, i don’t think we actually know that at all. solidarity between merlin and morgana would have been a nice thing, definitely; i’d like to see that too, but i don’t think the fact that she and merlin are both magic-users would have guaranteed harmony between them. merlin and gilli are both magic-users, too, and merlin expects this to be enough to convince gilli to “see the light,” but the fact of the matter is that merlin and gilli just have very different ideas about what it means to do the right thing. merlin thinks it means biding his time and waiting for change to come from the top (because he’s been TOLD by greater powers that this is the right course of action, of course; let’s note again that merlin’s situation is extremely complicated) whereas gilli thinks that doing things merlin’s way makes merlin complicit with an unjust regime. gilli says ‘i shouldn’t haven’t to wait for someone else to give me my rights. i’m going to take them myself.’

the fact that merlin and gilli share a bond as magic-users doesn’t protect them from an ideological divide that puts them on different sides of the same struggle. i’m not sure that merlin and morgana wouldn’t have still ended up in the same situation, eventually, if merlin had chosen to out himself to her - but doing so would certainly have made him a thousand times more vulnerable to attack.

third - it’s also important to remember that if we’re going to hold merlin to this rigid ‘he should have told morgana everything/confided in her/trusted her at the expense of possibly his own life despite the fact that she exists at the completely opposite end of a rigid social hierarchy as him and he’s known her for less than a year’ then maybe we ought to raise the bar for morgana, as well. morgana is very clearly shown to trust and appreciate merlin at the end of 2.03, but by 2.11, when alvarr and mordred show up and convince her to steal the crystal of neahtid, she doesn’t hesitate or come to merlin at all, despite the fact that we never see him do anything to lose her trust between then and now. she never asks him for help, even when she’s uncertain about alvarr’s methods, and that leaves merlin in the dark, only privy to confusing images of her sneaking around and acting suspicious. and even with that, merlin doesn’t condemn her for what she does, the same way he doesn’t blame her when she tries to kill uther in 1.12 - he helps arthur retrieve the crystal, but he doesn’t give morgana up. and he doesn’t hold any kind of grudge, either - in the next episode, merlin doesn’t even suspect her, at first - he thinks it must be her magic protecting her; he doesn’t even consider the idea that she has anything to do with the illness, not until kilgharrah tells him.

and even after that, he STILL covers for her in front of arthur, and he gives her a chance to come clean to him - but she doesn’t take it.

i’m not condemning her for that - i get why she would be afraid to admit to such a big mess - she was in way over her head and didn’t know what to do. but if we’re going to cut morgana this much slack and accept her fears as a valid enough reason to block a potential moment of connection, then we have to accept that merlin’s fears were valid, too - morgana’s descent into “villainy” was not something we can pin solely on merlin’s already overburdened shoulders. the end of season 2 was not some kind of one-way failure.

in summary: merlin and morgana were trapped in an impossible situation. they were both victims of the same oppressive regime, and both of them had very real, very dangerous obstacles to letting themselves trust in and reach out to others, and i think pitting them against each other while forgetting who the real villain was is unfair to them both.

also, a brief postscript: circling back to the first section of this piece, where i talked about how season 5 just stopped before anyone’s arc was finished - merlin and morgana could have had so much more, if we’d gotten another season. their relationship is really in the pits, by season 5, but there is this deleted scene where arthur is reflecting on what happened to morgana and blaming himself, and merlin says arthur shouldn’t take the blame, that “there were others better placed to help morgana” (implicating, of course, himself) and that was SUCH a jumping off point for their story to have continued. merlin wanted to do better by her. he blamed himself for what happened to her. and morgana, for her part, was starting to question herself, as we saw during her confrontation with mordred in 5.09.

there were places for this relationship to go. it wasn’t a lost cause. but the writers decided that it made more sense to just...eliminate everybody at the exact moment when things were poised to possibly change.

the story wasn’t over at the end of season 5. but the show was, and i am always going to regret those many lost opportunities.

#the once and future slowburn #meta #replies #long post

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bombshellsandbluebells · 4 years

Text

Hey @wolfheartgirl! responding to you here because boy that post is getting LONG

Thanks for joining the conversation! Always good to have more opinions! I’ll admit I also don’t agree with your points completely and I just in general have a different view of the characters and relationships I think. Also, being 110% honest here - I didn’t finish season 6 so I might be iffy on all the details and how they play out. At some point I just really could not bring myself to keep watching, not just because of what was happening but because of how bad the execution of the writing and the acting was. Let’s face it - no matter what ships or characters we like or what side of the fandom we’re on, we ALL deserved better than what we got execution wise. And that’s disappointing. :(

Anyways, onto some body-snatched Bellamy discussion!

1. The Monty Thing - completely fair points! I did forget that they reached out to Wells’ actor first and he was unavailable, which is a shame. But that’s a good reminder that sometimes writing gets dictated on television because of things like that the writers can’t control. I do think you’re correct here, and I was wrong when I said it didn’t make sense for it to be Monty. Monty appearing to Clarke was much more about his legacy and what he had asked them to do than it was about his relationship with Clarke. On second thought, yes he was the only one who really fit there.

What I WILL still argue is, even if it works with Clarke, it still WOULD have had more weight and emotion behind it if it was Bellamy. So basically, it’s fine as is in canon, might have worked BETTER if it was Bellamy.

2. Honesty hour. I don’t know....what Octavia did in season 6. I really don’t. I tried to follow. There was some quicksand and some time travel and I was just really lost and disinterested at that point and I stopped watching and I STILL don’t know what she did in the finale.

Octavia’s redemption is......iffy. As is. I love Octavia. I don’t always love Octavia’s writing. I really don’t like anything I saw of Octavia’s writing in s6 aside from getting paired with Diyoza, though even THAT fell flat for me. And I really don’t understand what role she played in this season at all.

So maybe she would have crossed lines trying to save Bellamy, but I also do think there is a possibility to do something fun with switching the dynamic to being “my brother, my responsibility” and her trying to make up for hurting him last season. Again, don’t know WHAT she did last season, so being part of the Save Bellamy Squad would have at least pulled her into the action a little more. (I know that Octavia’s time travelling quicksand adventures are supposed to help set up the whole s7 thing but honestly.....it’s way too confusing and disconnected from the rest of the season and would probably be better cut.)

3. Inside Man Murphy. Fair! Completely far! Murphy 100% would not have helped them he is ride or die for his family ESPECIALLY after last season. And true, his anger and growing indifference did lead to him helping Josephine! (I didn’t get to 6x11 lmao, but I am kind of glad to hear it was about Abby, not Clarke. That makes A LOT more sense for his character.) And I don’t think CLARKE saying she was proud was OOC - I more meant that in my opinion it doesn’t make a lot of sense for that to hold much weight with Murphy considering he DOESN’T care about Clarke or her opinion of him.

What I will say about this is that not every detail of how the season was written is going to work with Bellamy as the bodysnatched because it wasn’t written for Bellamy. It was written for Clarke to be bodysnatched and so all the details of that storyline are going to support that. The idea behind switching it was an attempt to try to fix some of the main character and relationship arc issues last season with one simple fix, though the entire execution of the plot would then have to be adjusted to fit Bellamy and not Clarke. So yeah, Murphy’s storyline as a WHOLE would probably have to be adjusted - if not completely changed - to make sense with his character.

I was thinking about this actually and I think in general most of Murphy’s storyline needs to change. For instance, why did his near death experience THEN suddenly spark this fear when he nearly died in the finale of s5. It wasn’t necessary to have him nearly die AGAIN just to convince us that Murphy is scared of dying. He always has been. That’s a core part of his character. It’s kind of redundant.

But I was thinking that the main arc Murphy goes on in s5 is that he feels worthless and that triggers his fears of being unloved and abandoned. This is a pretty core part of Murphy too so it makes a lot of sense. I didn’t think the resolution of this arc was the best, but Murphy choosing to save his family and being instrumental in doing so and then Monty and Bellamy risking their lives and the lives of everyone in the finale do a lot to prove to Murphy that he’s not worthless or expendable.

Rather than switching to a completely new arc for him in s6, it’d be nice to keep expanding on this idea. That might mean removing him from his current canon storyline completely (which, although I did like it and it IS in character, doesn’t add much more to his character since he’s already gone though many similar arcs)

What if instead he took on more of a leadership role in saving Bellamy? That’d be something new from him we haven’t seen before. It would echo back to moments in s5 when Bellamy asked for his opinion or he was the one to make a decision for the others. It would be a really exciting new adventure to take his character on and it’d just be new for him. Maybe then he could work closely with Clarke and we’d get an interesting new dynamic there. It’d also let Murphy continue his journey of realizing that he is not worthless, which is nice.

Just spitballing here. I do agree his current arc doesn’t at all work with bodysnatched Bellamy, so it would definitely have to change.

4/5. Ok, here’s where we won’t agree, haha. I’m not a Bellarke shipper at all. I don’t disagree that s6 was very centered on Bellarke. It was, absolutely. My issue is that that is directly at odds with s5. s5 set up Becho in the beginning, forced them through struggles and separated them for most of the season, but then reunited and reenforced their relationship at the end of s5. The clear takeaway seemed to be that Becho was here to stay and strong. Bellamy and Clarke’s dynamic was certainly important, but it wasn’t framed as romantic in s5 and wasn’t, to me, framed to be more important to Bellamy than Echo.

s6 then goes and completely flip-flops that with no development to get there. Becho goes from ending the season strong to finding over nonsense and then Bellamy being completely focused on Clarke. s6 absolutely frames Bellarke as more important, but it’s frustrating that it is so at odds with the season that came before it. If they wanted to switch from Becho to Bellarke - which I’ll admit, I’ll never be happy with - it at least needs to have more development. Because the last we’ve seen, Becho is happy and Bellamy and Clarke are not on the same page and dont’ have the same priorities. If they did want to change that, there just needs to be more growth between Bellamy and Clarke that isn’ reliant on what happened between them several seasons ago.

So frankly, I don’t think with EITHER of them bodysnatched that can happen. They don’t have the time to get to know each other again (remember, in canon, they haven’t seen each other in six years! you can absolutely re-fall in love with someone you knew, but it isn’t instant) which NEEDS to happen to sell that relationship. It isn’t good enough to me to rely on the development of early seasons when both characters have changed SO MUCH and been separated for so long.

I’m not going to argue whether the writers intend for Bellarke to be canonically romantic because honestly they have been so back and forth about it and unclear in the writing that I’m going to need some outright “I love you”s before I buy it. I do think they’re important to each other, I’m just going to need more recent development before I buy it, espeically after last season ended with Becho going strong.

6. Scrap the sheidheda storyline. Just scrap it. I really dislike it and it adds clutter to an already busy season. I don’t believe it really added anything of importance and just distracted from the other plotlines going on. You’re right it probably wouldn’t work with bodysnatched Bell but like.....I’m all for just getting rid of it. There’s more interesting ways to use Madi than whatever that nonsense was.

7. True! I actually talked to someone else about this. As it is currently written, the nightblood is a problem. However, like I said this plot and all it’s details was written to fit Clarke and it can easily be adjusted and re-written to fit Bellamy. Since bodysnatching and Sanctum was totally new this season, it doesn’t contradict anything previously established to just cut the nightblood thing out. A lot of other random details probably don’t fit for it to be Bellamy either because it just wasn’t written that way.

So yeah! Those are my thoughts :) Whew that was long.

I would also just really love to see everyone saving BELLAMY this time around since he’s always saving everyone else.

#the 100 #the 100 meta #bodysnatched bellamy

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thisiskevison · 4 years

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thanks for the tag @madsdefencesquad

The first character I first fell in love with...

Definitely Jack. The pilot episode of TIU was so magical and such an amazing introduction to the entire Pearson family, but Jack Pearson was the reason I stayed committed until I fell in love with the rest of the cast. Milo does so a good job with his character that I couldn’t wait to see how Jack grew as a father, as a husband. That man should have lived forever! It still hurts.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now...

Probably Madison. For most of the first two seasons, I never really paid her character much attention. I appreciated her role in Kate and Toby’s group, though it didn’t become obvious why she was there for a while. But I guess, I don’t know, I don’t think I really imagine she would ever become a major player in the show. And then, she became Kate’s best friend and showed just amazing and sweet she is. Madison has the biggest heart, despite going through a lot of really dark and painful stuff, and deserves all the love in the world. I would’ve never guessed how much I adore her now, if I’m being honest.

The character everyone else loves that I don’t...

Ah, though I’m really sure what the consensus is about him, I’m gonna have to say Toby. He’s never really done anything for me as a character, even though he is a good dad to Jack and a supportive husband (for the most part). Most of the time, he kind of just gets on my nerves and I don’t really know what that’s about. But I’m hoping that might change going forward. You’re got two seasons to make me love him TIU!

The character I love that everyone else hates...

The fandom has come a long way with Miguel, but he’s still not a favorite. Poor guy. But who could have compared to Jack Pearson. Absolutely no one! The guy was a superhero. He’s never tried to replace his best friend and deserves to be respected and loved as a member of the Pearson family.

The character I used to love but don’t any longer...

Not the biggest fan of Randall at the moment, but he’s still a favorite. Regarding the clinical trial, he believed he was doing what he thought was right. He just went about it all wrong, by emotional manipulating his mother. But I don’t completely absolve Kevin of blame either, they both said some really ugly things to each other. TIU is masterful at displayed the truth of human nature. Though I adore Randall, he is not a perfect person (none of them are) and that is okay.

The character I would totally smooch...

Kevin wasn’t my thing in the first season (or two), but things have changed mightily since. Justin Hartley is not hard to look at and Kevin’s character development has been the best. Oh, yeah. I’d kiss that guy, no problem.

The character I’d want to be like...

Gonna have to go with my girl Rebecca here. I have so much respect for her as a mother, as a mother, and a woman. The amount of love and grace she’s displayed is insane. The reason her family is so close (even if they are a bit dysfunctional) is a testament to her character. Sure, Jack was incredible father and husband, but he’s also been gone for a long time. Rebecca is the nucleus of the family and she should be proud of the family she raised.

The character I’d slap...

Marc, Kate’s best friend. I don’t really think this one needs much explanation. What a dick!

A pairing that I love...

Pretty obvious, but it’s got to be Kevin and Madison. Already, my hopes are high for these two. Individually, they both deserve so much love and happiness and I truly believe they can find it with each other. They have so much potential, it’s crazy. S5 can’t come fast enough!

A pairing that I despise...

Despise is a strong word and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but Kevin and Sophie aren’t the pairing for me. Don’t hate me! Even before Madison was even a consideration to end up with Kevin, this relationship was never my favorite. Though there is an element of their dynamic that can be appealing (high school sweethearts, first love), they should not be together. While I believe they will always have love for each other, there is too much pain and history there. By being together, they learned valuable lessons that helped them grow as people. There’s just no denying that.

#this was fun #this is us #tagged

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possiblyimbiassed · 6 years

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Harry the Secret Twin

Something struck me today, while looking for some quite different things. We do know that John ‘I’m-not-actually-gay’ Watson has a gay sister called Harry (short for Harriet), right? We actually learned this pretty soon, in the very first Sherlock episode. But they never told us if Harry is John’s big sister or little sister. Or maybe there’s a third alternative...

So, when I was reading these old comments on Ariane DeVere’s transcript sites from 2012, discussing the fact that John reminds Harry in his blog comments that she is 36 years in January, while John is referred to as 37 years in the papers six months later, I realized that yes; if these facts are correct and they both turned 37 in the first half of that year, twins could definitely be an option.

John and Harry might be twins, both in a literal and a symbolical sense.

The thing is, we have never seen Harry. Or actually, it seems like we’ve never been allowed to see Harry. She’s referred to repeatedly in the show - at least up until TSoT - but we never get to meet her; John’s own sister doesn’t even show up at his wedding! But from HLV and onwards, Harry Watson is never more even mentioned. For all we know, she’s a ‘secret twin’. In fact, there’s not a single gay or bisexual person mentioned ever again after TSoT, except for those who are presented as extremely dangerous people (Jim, Eurus and Irene). While up until TSoT, there were several others, apart from Harry:

• Mrs Turner’s ‘married ones’ in ASiP • Kenny Prince and Raoul in TGG • Kate (Irene’s GF) and ‘Your Highness’ in ASiB • Beppo and Pietro in The Six Thatchers (as described on John’s blog) • Gary and Billy from The Cross Keys in THoB • Sabrina in John’s blog post “Happily Ever After”, who I think we also see un-named in Sherlock’s speech in TSoT:

I never felt there was a ‘fair’ representation of LGBTQ people in the show, and these characters are either presented as involved in 'suspicious’ activities (e.g. Raoul, Gary and Billy) or pushed aside to peripheral corners of the show (e.g. the ‘married ones’, Sabrina) up until TSoT. But after this, they’re not even referred to. So I think what we see is an increasing level of heteronormativity from the introduction of ‘Mary’ and onwards. Which I think is also shown by the treatment of John’s and Sherlock’s relationship, which was discussed in the additions to the ‘Heimish test’ some time ago. And, of course, we were actually brought back in time, all the way to 1895, weren’t we?

And TAB, no matter how beautiful the setting, is impregnated with old-fashioned sexism, where Mrs Hudson is reduced to a plot device, Mary is supposed to have dinner ready when Watson and Holmes come home, ‘Hooper’ is next to ‘outed’ as a woman who is trying to ‘get ahead in a man’s world’ and Watson’s house maid is berated for being observant. And John Watson seems paranoid about a whole bunch of people with supposedly too radical opinions (socialists, suffragettes, serbians etc.).

And even as the double decker makes its way through Baker Street, after this we never see any actual transition to modern times, when Sherlock wakes up to them, do we? Even as the environment shifts, we’re stuck in the values of 1895.

Is this deliberate? Oh, yes, I think it definitely is; I believe the increasing heteronormativity and references to reactionary views are meant to provoke anyone attentive/interested enough to see it; it’s a worst case, dystopian, nightmarish scenario displayed in front of us, and I don’t think it will break until the protagonists (read Sherlock) realizes this. Until Sherlock wakes up from his coma, and the 120+ years old character can finally start to live...

So, what about Harry?

I think Harry’s absence is a part of this dystopia; she’s a secret twin, she isn’t allowed to come forth! That’s why we never get to see her. The only place where Harry seems to be ‘alive and kickin’ is on John’s blog (which has been silent since TSoT). I made a little research of her blog comments, to get a more complete picture of her. Harry has made a total of 47 blog comments. Basically, this is what I’ve found out:

- Harry’s love life isn’t going very well, as it seems; she’s divorced from Clara and no one else is ever mentioned.

- She seems incredulous to the idea that John would either be a ‘casanova’ or ‘gay’. Harry is curious about what’s going on with Sherlock, though, and seeks contact with John about it. She seems to pick up on their attraction to each other rather quickly.

- Harry has a problem with alcohol and a tendency to spout profanities in the comment section of John’s blog, especially in response to arrogant people. You can tell by her occasional grave misspellings when she’s inebriated. John doesn’t seem to want to have much contact with Harry, but he does try to help her whenever she has a crisis from the liquor.

- She’s passionate about many things and seems to easily flare up. When John is attacked by haters on his blog after Sherlock’s death, Harry defends him furiously (so furiously, apparently, that John deletes her comments).

- At the same time as John splits up with Sarah, Harry seems to be staying off the alcohol rather well. 3 months later, however, by the time John and Sherlock are described as ‘confirmed bachelors’ in the press, she’s on the booze again.

- A year later, after Sherlock’s ‘death’, at the same time as ‘Mary’ shows up on the blog, Harry seems aware of her drinking problem.

- When the friends gathered to celebrate John’s birthday (this is talked about in the MHR blogpost as well as in the show’s MHR), Harry was there too (which doesn’t exclude the possibility that it was her birthday too). But Sherlock was not there. Which means Sherlock might not ever have met Harry.

- After Sherlock’s return, when John announces that he’s getting married, Harry is back on alcohol. By the time the wedding approaches, she no longer comments much on the blog. But when John supports the ‘Mayfly Man’s methods, she chimes in with ‘Mary’s indignation.

So - can we discern a pattern here? Oh yes, I think we can. For some reason, Harry’s alcohol problems seem to be synchronized with John’s relationships with women. And if I’ve smuggled in a couple of pictures of John above, it’s because I think many of Harry’s traits/problems are visible in her (twin) brother as well: loneliness, alcoholism, hot temper... If you have read @sagestreet‘s meta series ‘Follow the dogs” (I can highly recommend it) you might remember his theories about John’s bisexuality in Part 5, represented for example in TGG by Connie Prince (his heterosexual side) and Kenny Prince (his homosexual side).

Or in Part 2 about THoB, represented by the fisherman (homo side) and his mother (hetero side). I honestly think these mirrors/metaphors can be applied to John and Harry as well.

So, my point here is the following:

I believe the reason why we never get to see Harry is because she is a metaphor for the gay part of John’s bisexuality, which he constantly tries to hide and repress. Sherlock hasn’t met Harry because John has never openly shown this side of himself to Sherlock. John mentions her very rarely, because he is closeted and doesn’t want to recognize that he has a side with same-sex attraction. Harry has alcohol problems because John tries to dumb down his physical longing for Sherlock with alcohol (in @sagestreet‘s analysis, John’s homo side is starved, even if it’s actually more prominent than his hetero side).

If I could make a wish for S5 (except for Johnlock, which I actually take for granted) it would be that they finally let us meet Harry. :)

Tagging some people who might be interested: @raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @loveismyrevolution @sagestreet @sarahthecoat @tjlcisthenewsexy @elldotsee @csi-baker-street-babes

#john's secret twin #Harry is a metaphor #heteronormativity in Sherlock #follow the dogs

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ? Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ? Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4.

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about.

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on.

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit.

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless.

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much.

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact.

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously.

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion.

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn.

#skam france #skamfr s5 #my meta #arthur broussard #skam france meta

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